Thinkers without Borders..Innovations from outside

Creating and implementing innovative ideas is increasingly difficult. Pressure to “make numbers” and streamline operations leaves little time for ingenuity.

We need new sources of innovation that can be easily applied to gain competitive advantage. Perhaps organizations need to identify and apply best practices and technology advancements from unexpected sources, namely, unrelated industries and organizations.

Many excellent examples of innovation from outside an industry are actually from well outside the industry.

• Can a sales management function adopt best practices for prospecting and refining oil?
• Can astronomy techniques to discover new celestial bodies be leveraged for demand forecasting?
• Can companies apply processes used to deploy mass transit systems, such as the Metro Rail program in New Delhi, for change management purposes?
• Can 3D printing technology be applied to the burgeoning field of tissue engineering?
• Can an ATMs be engineered to dispense reserved train/bus/plane tickets?

In a white paper published almost a decade ago in Information Week, i discussed on the need for looking outside for innovation..wonder the state of the same in different organizations?

LookingOutsideForInnovation